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We investigate the gender wage gap upon labor market entry among recent college graduates in Sweden and find a raw male-female wage gap of 12 percent. After adding controls for pre-labor market factors, only a gap of approximately 2.9 percent remains. Hence, pre-labor market factors, and especially the type of college major, explain the bulk of the initial gender wage gap, and there is little that can be attributed to employer discrimination. However, given the high minimum wages in the Swedish labor market discrimination may not be apparent in wages. Instead, employers may discriminate against women in hiring. Using data from a hiring experiment, we do not find any evidence of this. On the contrary, female job applicants tend to be preferred over male job applicants.

The question of whether and how living in a deprived neighborhood affects the labormarket outcomes of its residents has been a subject of great interest for both policy makers andresearchers. Despite this interest, empirical evidence of causal neighborhood effects on labormarket outcomes is scant, and causal evidence on the mechanisms involved is even more scant.The mechanism that this study investigates is neighborhood signaling effects. Specifically, weask whether there is unequal treatment in hiring depending on whether a job applicant signalsliving in a bad (deprived) neighborhood or in a good (affluent) neighborhood. To this end, weconducted a field experiment where fictitious job applications were sent to employers with anadvertised vacancy. Each job application was randomly assigned a residential address in either abad or a good neighborhood. The measured outcome is the fraction of invitations for a jobinterview (the callback rate). We find no evidence of general neighborhood signaling effects.However, job applicants with a foreign background have callback rates that are 42 percent lowerif they signal living in a bad neighborhood rather than in a good neighborhood. In addition, wefind that applicants with commuting times longer than 90 minutes have lower callback rates, andthis is unrelated to the neighborhood signaling effect. Apparently, employers view informationabout residential addresses as important for employment decisions.

We investigate whether there is unequal treatment in hiring depending on whether a job applicant signals living in a bad (deprived) neighborhood or in a good (affluent) neighborhood.

Design/methodology/approach

We conducted a field experiment where fictitious job applications were sent to employers with an advertised vacancy. Each job application was randomly assigned a residential address in either a bad or a good neighborhood. The measured outcome is the fraction of invitations for a job interview (the callback rate).

Findings

We find no evidence of general neighborhood signaling effects. However, job applicants with a foreign background have callback rates that are 42 percent lower if they signal living in a bad neighborhood rather than in a good neighborhood. In addition, we find that applicants with commuting times longer than 90 minutes have lower callback rates, and this is unrelated to the neighborhood signaling effect.

Originality/value

Empirical evidence of causal neighborhood effects on labor market outcomes is scant, and causal evidence on the mechanisms involved is even more scant. We provide such evidence.

A recent study of 36 sub-Saharan African countries found a positive impact of aid in theabsolute majority of these countries. However, for Tanzania and Ghana, two major aidrecipients, aid did not seem to have been equally beneficial. This paper singles out these twocountries for a more detailed empirical investigation. The focus is now on the effect of aidwhen allowing external and nominal factors to play a role in the macroeconomic transmissionmechanism. We conclude that aid played a significantly positive―but very different―role inthe two countries. Due in part to generous aid inflows Tanzania experienced positiveinvestment and GDP growth from the late 1960s to 2007. But, until the mid-1980s, theimpact of aid on growth was well below its potential as the large inflows of aid facilitated aserious over appreciation of the real exchange rate. In Ghana, declining aid in the 1970s wasassociated with lacking growth while the reactivation of aid flows in the 1980s supported aneconomic rebound. When monetary and external factors are properly accounted for, we findthat aid has been pivotal to growth in both real GDP and investment.

5.

Juselius, Katarina

et al.

University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Reshid, Abdulaziz

Linnaeus University, School of Business and Economics, Department of Economics and Statistics.

Tarp, Finn

University of Copenhagen, Denmark ; United Nations University World Institute of Development Research (UNU-WIDER), Finland.

A recent study of 36 sub-Saharan African countries found a positive impact of aid in the majority of these countries. However, for Tanzania and Ghana, two major aid recipients, aid did not seem to have been equally beneficial. This study singles out these two countries for a more detailed empirical investigation. The focus is on the effect of aid when allowing external and nominal factors to play a role in the macroeconomic transmission mechanism. We conclude that when monetary and external factors are properly accounted for, then aid has been pivotal to growth in both real GDP and investment.

A recent World Bank (2011) study has documented a rise in the mortality risk of girls relative to boys in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper investigates whether this disadvantage for girls in child mortality is a result of son bias in parents’ health investments in child nutrition (breastfeeding) and preventive medicine (vaccination) in a Sub-Saharan African country, Ethiopia. We also examine potential heterogeneity in son bias by distinguishing intended from unintended births. The latter implies that the mother had more children than she wanted, which may be a result of a lack of effective contraception or her husband’s desire for more sons. Using data from the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey, we find no gender bias in breastfeeding and vaccination of sons and daughters. A further examination of the results reveals that the treatment of boys and girls depends on whether the birth was intended. We find that intended boys and girls receive similar treatment in breastfeeding and vaccination. However, among unintended children, we find that girls receive significantly less breastfeeding and vaccinations than boys. Our finding implies that government policies designed to improve access to effective contraception and women’s bargaining power in the household are important to reducing unintended births and its consequences for girls’ well-being.

During the first ten years in the labor market, male university graduates experience a faster wage growth than their female counterparts in the Swedish labor market. This paper investigates the role of job mobility and upward occupational mobility in explaining the gender gap in early career wage growth. The analysis reveals that, although job and occupational mobility significantly contributes to the early career wage growth of both males and females, the size of the wage growth effect of both types of mobility are significantly lower for females. This female mobility penalty persists even after accounting for gender differences in observable individual and job characteristics as well as unobserved individual specific heterogeneity. We further investigate to what extent this mobility penalty of women is explained by parental status. We find that women’s penalty in returns to upward occupational mobility is largely linked to the timing of childbirth and child care, which suggests the presence of a trade-off between work and family. But women’s penalty in returns to “voluntary” job mobility does not seem to be mainly associated with parental status, in which a sizable gender gap in return to “voluntary” job mobility is found among the childless as well as parents.

During the first 10 years in the Swedish labor market, male university graduates experience a faster wage growth than females. We investigate the role job and upward occupational mobility have for the creation of gender difference in early career wage growth; and the role of motherhood as an underlying mechanism. We find that although men and women change jobs and occupations at the same rate, women receive a significantly lower wage returns to mobility than men. We find evidence that women's lower return to occupational mobility is largely explained by motherhood, while the evidence for job mobility is rather weak.